Uzbek tea and tea traditions

Tea plays a very important role in Uzbek cuisine. It starts and completes every meal, and a cup of tea is how any conversation begins.

Green in the south, black in the east

Green tea — kok choy — is drunk through the hot months and in Samarkand and Bukhara year round. Black tea is more common in Tashkent and the Fergana valley, often with milk in winter.

The three pours

Watch your host. The first cup is poured back into the pot, then the second, then the third — loy, moy, choy: clay, fat, tea. Only then is the bowl handed to you, and it is handed with the right hand, with the left touching the heart.

Why the bowl is never full

A half-filled piala is respect: it means your host expects to refill it, and that you will stay. A brimming cup politely says the opposite.